Welcome back 2 Twitter 4 me. It’s been awhile: keeping up with social media is a full time job! But I look forward to being more active.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Technology may finally be solving the thorny problem of buying clothing online – that you cannot try things on. Through scanners and data mining, consumers are now able to get a custom fit, saving them time and money because they do not have to order multiple items and return what doesn’t fit.

The majority of these new systems do not cost a thing for the buyer to use. They are more about recommending a more exact sizing and style than if the customer tries to pick an item on their own.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – You succumb and buy your kids “Let it Go” on iTunes to play over and over on your phone – but are you thinking about what happens when they get their own devices? Even though you bought and own it, you can’t pass it along, transfer or give it away because of the way digital purchases are structured.

As parents come to realize the limitations of their Apple ID and Google Play strategies, they are frustrated. All the apps, songs and movies they’ve purchased are quarantined in their own accounts. When the kids branch out to their own devices, they pretty much just have to start over, with limited workarounds.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – As superstore pricing mysteries go, it’s not the equivalent of “The Da Vinci Code,” but there’s still something deliciously elusive about the so-called “Costco Code” that has set the tongues of shopping mavens wagging for the past several months.

At least the plot line is direct enough: If you can interpret what the various sequences of digits and asterisks mean on Costco Wholesale Club price signs, you’re on your way to scoring serious bargains.

CHICAGO (Reuters) – As a Brooklyn-based architect, James Schaefer works on properties with some very high-end patios – think in the $100,000 range – which, of course, gets him thinking about his own. His own scale is a little lower, about “$25,000 to get a start at it,” Schaefer says.

For that, his 19 x 35 ft. (5.8 meter x 10.7 meter) outdoor space in Park Slope will get pretty souped up. “We will definitely put in a grill, piped-in natural gas and it would be fun to put a bocce lane in there,” he says. “We’d like a nice table, some lighting and we’d plant a tree, but since we don’t have lots of space, it might be something smaller like a Japanese maple.”

CHICAGO (Reuters) – As an Amazon Prime customer since December 2012, Michelle Huffman of Milwaukee has gladly paid the annual $79 fee for the perk of free two-day shipping on items ranging from tea and cookbooks to DVDs and Nestle Smarties (milk chocolate buttons imported from Germany).

But if Amazon.com Inc raises its annual Prime rates by between $20 and $40, as the e-commerce giant hinted it might during a quarterly earnings conference call in January, Huffman will rethink her decision.

About Lou

"Lou Carlozo most recently served as the managing editor at WalletPop.com, AOL's personal finance website. He also wrote and created "The Recession Diaries" column at the Chicago Tribune, where he served as an editor and staff writer for 16 years. The author of a journalism textbook and an adjunct professor at National-Louis University, Carlozo is the lead popular music critic for Christian Century magazine, a contributor to Downbeat magazine and also writes the "Green Dad" column for DealNews.com. The opinions expressed are his own."